Ralph Hotere 'Song of Solomon'

“The oily black inks evoke the oil slicks that resulted from the

Middle Eastern conflict, and also the plumes of smoke from burning

refineries. Trails of dots, reminiscent of Tangi at Mitimiti and

Hotere’s Mungo paintings, in this case become tracer fire in the

night sky or bomb craters in a desolate landscape. The horizontal

panels of white and black denote the desert horizon.”

— Gregory O’Brien (describing Ralph Hotere’s Song of

Solomon)¹

In August 1990, Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait over oil disputes. A few months later, in January 1991, The United States led a military campaign against Iraq, dubbed Operation Desert Storm. The conflict, now referred to primarily as the Gulf War, dominated newspaper headlines and media broadcasts at the time. A significant feature of media coverage was the intense aerial bombardment of Iraq by the United States military.

Song of Solomon is a major work by Ralph Hotere, made in collaboration with poet Cilla McQueen – Hotere’s wife of many years. This work was made at the time the Gulf War was taking place, and textual aspects of the work, collaged into the piece, reference the language being used in the media at the time.
“Target airburst resistance stakegas softenup military carpet bloodbaby lobkill tactical gas hatchet gascarpet bombstrike surgical mothermilk” reads one section, contrasted by a second line reading “the time of singing birds is come – a line from the biblical Song of Solomon referenced by the artwork title.

Commenting on this work, writer Gregory O’Brien states, “The disparity between the 1990s ‘newspeak’ which is laser-printed on to the fourteen sheets of paper and Hotere’s characteristic handwriting, which conveys the biblical lines, creates an appropriately tense linguistic as well as visual framework.”² The Song of Solomon is a biblical canticle in the form of a collection of love poems spoken alternately by a man and a woman. In this work, McQueen and Hotere exchange lines, though the contrast between snippets of media language addressing armed conflict and poetic biblical text is stark.

Hotere and McQueen shared a social conscience – protest against injustice was often a central theme of their work. Their shared response to the horror of the Gulf War is clearly evident in Song of Solomon. One can detect notes of protest at both the invasion that sparked the conflict and the ferocious intensity of the US-led response. The work is solemn in content and tone, invoking the explosions in Iraqi cities and the refinery fires that raged on after the conflict for most of 1991.

Hotere is a great of New Zealand art, and McQueen one of the nation’s finest poets. This work combines Hotere’s distinctive painterly aesthetic with McQueen’s finesse with language. While the two frequently collaborated, it is a rarity for both to have signed a work – which they have done in this instance. Song of Solomon is a remarkable work of art. It acts as a record of a particular global event and accompanying zeitgeist, and as a prime example of a collaborative artistic relationship.

1 Gregory O’Brien, Out the Black Window. Auckland, Godwit Publishing, 1997. Page 109.
2 Ibid.